Scams & Gimmicks

Back in the day, there was a "tonic" called Hadacol. It was hyped as vitamin elixir, a dietary supplement, a source of vitamins B1 (thiamin), B2 (riboflavin), and B3(niacin), plus iron. Hadacol was advertised as something you would take for your health, that would relieve the root cause of many ailments, from heartburn to nervous disorders.

Weight loss is a difficult venture. A simple search on the subject will leave your head spinning with information. Regrettably, you end up with a lot of misinformation and outright deception as well.

We have ads touting low calorie soup, low calorie cereal, low calorie yogurt, as opposed to that "high calorie" yogurt - you know, with a whole 100 calories per serving. Oh, and the soup is advertised as having only 80 calories per serving "and no fat." Welcome to the post-100-calorie-pack advertising gimmick.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who talks back to the television. Okay, what I really do is yell at the television. I yell at politicians, and the people on my soap operas. I yell with real gusto at food ads.

"Organic" is no kind of guarantee of nutrition. Please don't get me wrong. I am not against organic food. I buy a lot of local, small farm, organically raised stuff myself.

Once you start paying attention to food advertising, you start to realize how much our attitudes about food have been shaped by it - and generally not for the better.

The idea that starch or fat can be blocked from digestion appears to be an appealing idea. For the past thirty or more years, these products have come to the forefront periodically with promises for a new generation of overweight people. Each time they come on the market, they offer up suggestions that you can eat what you want so long as you take their product. The product, so goes the promise, will protect you from the consequences of eating the blocked food group.

The combination of ephedrine, caffeine, and aspirin is commonly referred to as the "E-C-A Stack" or just the "Stack". Many of the herbal products on the market contain ma-huang in combination with willow bark, a naturally-occurring source of a chemical similar to aspirin, and with guarana or kola nuts, sources of caffeine. There are also products that mix chemical sources of caffeine and actual aspirin in the mix with the ma-huang. Some people who take the Stack prefer using ephedrine/ma-huang alone, and accompanying it with a caffeine-containing beverage and a half an aspirin.

We've been talking about diet medications, and most recently, about Fen/phen. There seems to be a constant hunt for chemicals that will make one slim. Today we'll take a look at some of the herbal preparations for obesity that are vying for our consumer dollars.

In my last article, I discussed the development of the diet pill phenomenon. This brilliant marketing strategy changed the course of the medical treatment for obesity by grouping together different kinds of drugs that might (or might not, for that matter) have some relation to weight loss, and then selling the patient all the drugs at once. The plan was enormously lucrative for the drug companies who manufactured the chemicals, and also for the so-called "fat doctors" who prescribed them. But before we put all the blame on the drug companies and the doctors, we must face a certain reality. The public was very willing to hear the message that overweight can be treated with chemicals.

Weight Loss In Clubs & By Drugs: Scams & Gimmicks. We have been talking in the previous half dozen or so articles about diets and dieting. We've looked at plans and paraphernalia, machines and food combination diets, calorie counting and meals in cans. Then came weight loss clubs.

We are continuing our discussions of diets, dieting, and the various ways people have attempted to lose weight. In the last article we looked at the phenomenon of women's magazines as a huge factor in the return of calorie counting after World War II. And we saw the rise of meals in a can, which are still with us today.